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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26053411">Rapture Headcanons</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neriad13/pseuds/Neriad13'>Neriad13</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>BioShock 1 &amp; 2 (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Headcanon, Meta, Persephone - Freeform, Rapture, Worldbuilding, rape discussion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:22:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,232</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26053411</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neriad13/pseuds/Neriad13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>All my worldbuildy headcanons, collected in one spot - now with slightly more headcanon! Most of these were written to nail down the worldbuilding of 'Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range' and 'Delta's Heart', but the rest were purely for fun.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Persephone Headcanons</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>- Warden Weir isn’t spliced - he’s just badass. He maintains control through sheer brutality and force of personality. Fearlessly wading into splicer fights and breaking them up himself is his favorite sport. He never, ever refers to an inmate by name and has a preternatural ability to match faces to identification numbers.</p><p> - Every arriving inmate is issued a metal identification bracelet which is stamped with the number they're meant to go by for the duration of their stay in Persephone. Penal employees are encouraged to refer to inmates by number rather than name, in order to dissuade them from forming attachments. See 'Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range: Prologue' for a more in-depth discussion about the inmate culture surrounding the use of identification numbers. </p><p> - Higher ranking prison guards are issued unique asbestos-lined jackets with rubber cores in order to protect them from the harmful effects of some plasmids. Rubber boots and clothing made of ballistic material are also a part of their uniform.</p><p> - There’s a system of appeals that a prisoner can go through to attempt to secure their freedom, but most everyone knows that the paperwork gets lost the second you file it. A few people become obsessed with getting themselves out through legal means but most just accept that they’re going to be here for the long haul. Harold Parson appealed for years before losing hope.</p><p> - The commissary is stocked with overpriced, sometimes ridiculous, luxury items to tempt inmates into volunteering for product testing and can be accessed between the hours of 12 PM-6 PM. Food of better quality can also be purchased from the “Sinclair’s Deluxe Meals” menu. A lot of people stay sane by buying little luxuries for themselves now and then. But there’s a danger in falling too deeply into that mindset and <i>needing</i> those luxuries to get by. The more money they need, the more money they need to earn and the only way most people can earn money, they well know, is by exchanging their health and humanity at Fontaine Futuristics.</p><p> - In the beginning, all test subjects were chosen at random, drugged and shipped off to Fontaine Futuristics. After Sinclair implemented the volunteer system, the number of involuntary testing stints dropped, but did not cease. Most inmates are surprisingly stubborn about what they're willing to do to their bodies, even in the face of threat or reward. But Fontaine Futuristics sends Persephone a weekly quota they need filled, which often cannot be done with volunteers alone. Inmates are chosen based on how recently they were last seen Upstairs (See Persephone Slang), how many product tests they've done in their career at the prison and how many favors the guard doing the kidnapping (usually after lights out) owes them. Old timers who have done this multiple times are fairly chill about it and try to get it over with as quickly and smoothly as possible. It’s considerably scarier for first timers, for whom they often have to break out the ether.</p><p> - Before an inmate leaves Fontaine Futuristics to return to their cell, the lab techs try to make sure that they've used up all the EVE they were given. "Try" is the operative word here. Because ADAM changes, to a small extent, the way all bodily systems operate, there is no reliable way to tell what the level of EVE is in anyone's blood. But after comparing so many individual capabilities and keeping track of the average number of charges a given plasmid holds, they have a pretty good idea of the approximate amount of blasts a person has before they're empty. So it's a general rule among prisoners that they hold onto the last handful of EVE they have left while pretending they're out. It's an easy and very successful ruse. This handful of EVE is most commonly used to play pranks or extract revenge on people they deem worthy of those things. Grudge-holding individuals are given a wide berth by both guards and inmates when they return from Upstairs. This is the issue that gives Sinclair the biggest headache in running the business.</p><p> - There’s a huge, overt gambling ring headed by Dodge, a former mafia don. His lackeys are always somewhere close by to facilitate bets on splicer fights, games (dice and cards, mostly, but variations on Russian Roulette are also quite popular) and his famed cockroach races. He’s also in the business of loans - to both inmates and guards. Every so often, after a fight caused by a gambling dispute or a mysterious death happens, there’s a crackdown on his business, but it never lasts. After all, a good chunk of the prison staff are in his pocket too.</p><p> - EVE is a strictly controlled substance within the walls of Persephone. Employees must check their own supply of it at reception when they enter the prison and are not allowed to shoot up on the clock (though after seeing the effects of ADAM on the inmates they work with everyday, some of them are understandably more wary of splicing). However, there are definitely employees who make a lot of money on the side through smuggling it in, usually to Dodge, who then sells it at a markup to other inmates. EVE replenishing items are also kept out of the commissary and vending machines. This rule is one of the biggest causes of grief in the prison because it includes cigarettes.</p><p> - The Persephone economy is entirely cash-based, in order to facilitate spending in the commissary and the vending machines. The vending machines are the reason it's not monopoly money - Sinclair deemed it too expensive to reconfigure them for fake money and having never run a prison before, didn't recognize the danger in allowing prisoners real cash. Everyone has a spot where they hide their savings and they can usually whip out a wad of cash from nowhere at a second’s notice. Stealing from a cell in which its occupant is not present is considered to be an action of the lowest parasitical caliber. But beating up the occupant and then taking their things is fine, as they did earn them with the sweat of their brow.</p><p> - Persephone is home to common thieves, murderers and grifters caught up in the wrong grift, but a not-insignificant part of the population are political prisoners who have been imprisoned for their outspoken Collectivist views. These are the ones who actively try to make Persephone a better place than the one they were exiled from, with dreams (urged on by Lamb) of building a more perfect society from below. They go out of their way to help the inmates who are suffering the most as best they can. They are the only ones who do favors for others without expecting recompense (in Rapture, both inside and outside the prison, it is common for every small human interaction to be in some way transactional. everything <i>else</i> has a price, after all). When someone threatens a weaker inmate, if they are able to, they step in to help. If an inmate's political affiliation is known, the prison staff goes to great lengths to house them separately from their fellows. The rare occasions in which they find a way to be together are the thing that keeps them going.</p><p>  - There’s a divide between the Splicys (badly deformed splicers) and the Squares (inmates who may be spliced, but are able to pass as ordinary humans), which is partially staff mandated and partially cultural. The accepted rule of thumb is that the more heavily spliced someone is, the more unstable they are and the more danger they present to the general population. Thus, Splicys and Squares are generally kept in separate cell blocks; A-B for the Splicys and C-D for Squares. A more polite moniker with which to refer to a Splicy is 'A-Blocker.' Interaction between the groups is minimized as much as possible. Their activities are typically scheduled in different time slots. When needs force them to mingle in the cafeteria, they sit at different tables. If a member of one group attempts to sit with another, they are met with ridicule and social ostracization. But the truth is that the Squares are <i>afraid</i> of the Splicys because in them, they see their own future. Sometimes this fear manifests instead as outwardly directed anger, which can lead to devastating violence, more often than not, inflicted by a Square on a Splicy.</p><p> - The line between Splicy and Square is a blurry one and based more on physical deformity than anything else. A Splicy could be someone whose single splice led to a very visible, very disabling, physical deformity. A Square could be someone who’s spliced over and over but experienced little in outwardly identifiable side effects. But when someone's moved to A Block, there's no doubt about which group they belong to now. There are more Squares than will admit to it who secretly keep up contact with their friends who have gone over to the other side.</p><p> - Not all Splicys have lost their minds. The vast majority of them are just disabled individuals who are now dealing with ostracization and loss of status on top of everything else they're going through. But keeping their sanity is a much harder prospect for them, due to their lack of social support, more than any other single factor. </p><p> - Splicys - because of reasons which frequently include: not caring what happens to them anymore, wanting to spend what remains of their lives in style or using their ADAM addiction to cope with their negative feelings - tend to volunteer for plasmid tests at a much higher rate than their counterparts. Oddly, this means that they have more money than anyone else in the prison (excluding Dodge). They're the biggest spending commissary customers, with the nicest cells, who eat the best food and have their pick of alcoholic beverages. This does not endear them to the Squares in the least. </p><p> - The Plasmid Theater is typically staffed by inmates who have volunteered for the position. Job qualifications are: must be a good-looking Square and have a sense of showmanship. It's one of the most highly paid and sought after jobs in the prison, but few people are good enough at it to make the cut. Inmates who have held the job for a long time are among the highest ranking individuals in the social hierarchy of Persephone. </p><p> - The majority of Plasmid Theater shows are non-lethal, public demonstrations of mundane plasmid use, mixed with entertaining tricks and commentary. Accidents do happen, though (most famously when the sleeve of a performer demonstrating uses for Incinerate caught fire in front of a packed theater. Fontaine was not pleased). </p><p> - There's something of an underground subculture of the ultra rich, who sponsor gladiatorial fights (which are not <i>supposed</i> to be to the death, but often are) in the Plasmid Theater. Ryan disapproves of them and shut them down when he seized Fontaine's assets, but nearly every other magnate loves them. Security companies looking to make a big investment in equipping their officers with the latest combat plasmids are also treated to private fights, in order to show off the product's potential and hopefully seal the deal. The more sadistic volunteer performers jump at the chance to really show off their powers and with more opportunities to practice, become much more skilled at it than the average plasmid user. Sinclair absolutely hates organizing fights and frequently asks that they be non-lethal (and is as frequently ignored). This is sometimes mistaken for him giving a damn about his prisoners, but the reason it upsets him is solely because a dead inmate is one that he can no longer profit off of. He sets prices for fights higher than an ordinary product test.</p><p> - The woman’s wing - a building disconnected from the main compound and only accessible by bathysphere - was something of an afterthought and put together in a slapdash manner when it became impossible to house the sexes separately in the main compound. Because of the cutoff between facilities, it has its own acting warden, though she does ultimately report to Weir. Plasmid testing goes on at more or less the same rate here as it does in the main compound, with most of the same rewards. Because of the difficulty of reaching it, the undesirability of working there and its low rank on Sinclair's list of priorities, it is a badly overcrowded, understaffed and under-supplied facility which chews up and spits out workers (not to mention inmates) like nobody's business. </p><p> - The woman's wing has a rudimentary infirmary with one overworked nurse, so badly injured inmates must be shipped to the mens' facility to recover, where they might recount tales to the male inmates about how lucky they are to not be living sub-basement (see Persephone Slang). This was actually a strategy of Lamb's through which she passed messages along to her followers in the other facility, in order to coordinate actions and gain information about the goings-on elsewhere. </p><p> - Because of the lack of oversight and the sparseness of staff, Lamb had a lot more freedom to move around in the women's wing than she would have otherwise. She gained control of that facility first and from it, orchestrated her takeover of the main compound. Sinclair’s long-delayed plans to expand the wing were cancelled after control of Persephone was wrested from him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Persephone Slang</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Some of these I ended up using and some, I ended up dropping, but they're all fun.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>An isolated environment, as well as the need for covert communication, makes for unique slang. Sometimes the guards get in on it too and inadvertently use it around their friends, who then use it themselves with an incomplete understanding of where it came from.</p><p><strong>Upstairs</strong> - Fontaine Futuristics </p><p>i.e. “They took him upstairs two nights ago. Ain’t seen him since.”</p><p><strong>Penthouse</strong> - Rapture, the parts of it that are not part of the prison or Fontaine Futuristics. Typically accompanied by a finger pointed upward.</p><p>i.e. “Well…okay…<i>maybe</i> things are like that up in the Penthouse but here…they don’t <i>have to be.</i>”</p><p><strong>Basement-level</strong> - Persephone’s main compound</p><p>i.e. “So, what’d <i>you</i> do to make it Basement-level, comrade?”</p><p><strong>Sub-basement</strong> - the woman’s wing</p><p>i.e. “She’s Sub-basement. Apparently their infirmary can’t handle fourth degree burns.”</p><p><strong>Sun</strong> - the surface. Applicable as an adjective or a noun.</p><p>i.e. “Yeah, I’ve got two sunny sons. I was planning on inviting ‘em down once I was settled but…well…” </p><p>“You think you’re ever gonna see sun again, splicy?”</p><p><strong>Meatpackers</strong> - a derogatory term for infirmary workers, because they are known for packing the bodies of inmates who have died of something interesting in ice, for further study in Fontaine Futuristics. </p><p>i.e. “Goddamn meatpackers wouldn’t refill my morphine drip.”</p><p><strong>Chronic</strong> - an inmate who returns to Fontaine Futuristics for product testing more often than what’s required in order to get high or satisfy ADAM cravings. </p><p>i.e. “Poor guy’s gone chronic. Won’t be long before he takes the big nap.”</p><p><strong>Matchstick</strong> - a new arrival who has never spliced before </p><p>i.e. “That matchstick you’re bunking with get burnt up yet?”</p><p><strong>The Brig</strong> - solitary confinement. It’s something of a running joke to compare the facility to a ship.</p><p>i.e. “They threw him in the brig after he dumped a load of bees on Wilson’s head.”</p><p><strong>Big Man</strong> - Sinclair. Never said to his face.</p><p>i.e. “Plasmids, gene tonics - whatever it is, it goes through us first. The Big Man turns a profit renting us out.”</p><p><strong>Cherry Juice</strong> - ADAM. More often shortened to ‘juice’. </p><p>i.e. “You got the juice, bucko?”</p><p><strong>Steve</strong> - covert way of referring to EVE </p><p>i.e. “Seen Steve lately?” “Nah, he’s been gone awhile.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. ADAM Headcanons</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>- With the more destructive-to-skin plasmids (namely, Incinerate and Winter Blast), the damage shown is actually occurring, but is kept in check by the natural self-healing rate of ADAM in the system. The goal of crafting a workable plasmid is to find a stable balance between the rate of healing and the damaging expression of power. If the plasmid is too weak, the healing rate overtakes the expression of power, rendering it useless. If it’s too strong, it actually <i>does</i> destroy the user’s hand when they attempt to use it and requires more than ADAM’s natural healing rate to fix it. </p><p> - This is why they couldn’t just make Incinerate as weak as a lighter - a much more sound business choice that would have been likely to result in way less lawsuits. The user had to have the capability of summoning an inferno so that the healing rate didn’t cancel out the power expression totally.</p><p> - Having your hand burnt or frozen or electrocuted in order to use your powers is not a painless process. This is why most plasmids also contain a pain inhibitor that blocks off the worst of the discomfort. It still feels profoundly weird to activate a plasmid, but is nowhere near the level of pain suggested by the visuals. This also means that anyone who’s ever spliced is more resistant to pain in general which…explains a lot.</p><p> - ADAM is a venal injection. EVE is an intramuscular injection. Jack was stabbing himself in the butt with EVE the entire time and has a lot of little holes in the seat of his pants. Stabbing yourself in the butt with ADAM does not give you superpowered farts but does send you to the hospital with embarrassing complications.</p><p> - The bugs in Insect Swarm are not actually living creatures and are semi-formed simulacrums made from the components of the user’s own blood. They have no reproductive organs or digestive system. Once the limited energy in their cells run out, they die. Anemia is a frequent concern among gardeners.</p><p> - All plasmids which create some kind of removable object work this way - Enrage, Hypnotize, Security Bullseye. Experienced Winter Blast users can also make icy projectiles out of their own plasma. But if they get too low on liquid, their projectiles come out increasingly streaked with blood. It’s very important to stay hydrated while splicing!</p><p> - Hypnotize requires inhalation of the compound to work. The smell is strong, chemical and often has a milder effect on people near the intended target (they might be able to hear the user’s mental commands but are not compelled to follow them). It is possible, if you’re very, very quick and extremely lucky in location, to slap another air supply over your face to prevent yourself inhaling the compound. The paranoid keep oxygen tanks around for this reason. Which are also conveniently good for blowing up.</p><p> - Hypnotize users are typically only able to give one or two word commands to their targets. Saying them out loud is the easiest way to do so for novices, as the spoken words serve as a focus for the user’s will. With practice and depending on the strength of the user’s will, one can forgo saying them out loud. With even more practice and a solid ability to clear one’s mind, one can issue more complex commands.</p><p> - When a big daddy is hit with Hypnotize, a sensor in their suits is programmed to recognize the compound and open a vent in their helmets to allow inhalation. The plasmid’s original purpose was the efficient control of rogue big daddies and the prevention of accidents like Suchong’s death. It wasn’t marketed to the public until the beginning of the civil war, when Ryan found that he could make a buck selling palm-sized personal protection. </p><p> - This plan backfired on Ryan spectacularly when assassins repeatedly tried to sic big daddies on him and his supporters. The product was pulled from the market after a short run, leaving few users in possession of it and making the remaining dosages of it a rare, valuable find indeed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Rapture Dining Headcanons</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>- It isn’t economically feasible to raise a sizable amount of cattle, pigs or sheep within the confines of Rapture. The vast amounts of space and feed needed is just too expensive to justify it. The methane output is also something that puts a limit on how many animals it’d be safe to keep alive in a given building.</p><p> - However, they are able to raise chickens and rabbits, though they are, due to supply and demand, prohibitively expensive to buy for the lower classes. Cohen’s collection of actual rabbits in his club is a blatant show of wealth. Look at him, filling his establishment with valuable food that a large section of the population can’t afford to buy and letting it hop around. Those rabbits were definitely eaten by patrons and workers holed up in there at some point during the war.</p><p> - Seafood is big business and much, much cheaper than it normally is on the surface. At the city’s inception, crab, shrimp, mussels, clams and whitefish could be bought for less than a dollar a pound. Luxury seafood like king crab, caviar, lobster and swordfish could also be produced much more inexpensively but because of the cultural baggage associated with them, they still commanded higher premiums. Unsold luxury seafood, as well as other unwanted scraps, are sold as fertilizer to Arcadia and the other farming areas of the city. Due to unregulated overfishing over the years, prices of seafood gradually went up and fishermen had to go further and further out to score comparable catches.</p><p> - Rapture’s overfishing problem was a big part of the reason why Iceland (who was claiming more and more fishing grounds for themselves) and Britain (who was being pushed out of previously international fishing grounds) were engaged in the Cod Wars intermittently between 1958-76. With the conclusion of the final Cod War, Iceland unknowingly claimed Rapture itself as being within its Exclusive Economic Zone.</p><p> - Legally, the foods consumed to show off wealth and power are the rare chickens and rabbits, tuna and swordfish steaks, caviar and oysters. Ryan’s dinner parties are completely on the books…and are considered incredibly boring, menu-wise, by their attendees. Everyone with a good amount of money gets sick of even the best seafood eventually. </p><p> - Illegally, nothing says more about how much money a person has than a smuggled steak. Or pork chops. Or ribs. Or a speakeasy BBQ joint. People who haven’t had real meat in a while sometimes go a little overboard with the meat parties. The ultra wealthy eat it on the regular. The lower classes will save up to buy smuggled meat for special occasions or unsold meat of questionable freshness. This is how disease outbreaks that reveal the presence of a smuggling ring break out.</p><p> - There were smaller smuggling rings run by construction workers since before the city’s opening, from the secret bays of the city through which construction materials were shipped, that were meant to be sealed off once construction was complete. Some of them were bought out by Fontaine. The ones he couldn’t buy were violently shut down. Some of them gradually dissolved as their members dropped out of the business. Some of them were blown in to the authorities and quietly shut down. None of them besides Fontaine’s operation existed in the years leading up to the civil war.</p><p> - Fake meat is also big business. There’s a few startups that offer somewhat palatable lab grown meat (also expensive), but most fake meat is soy or gluten based. Nobody has yet created the perfect facsimile of a steak, but the ground fake meat products are generally fairly good.</p><p> - Because of lax labeling laws, it’s hard to know for sure if you’re getting real meat in prepackaged products. Odds are: probably not. Coincidentally, it is also hell on earth to have food allergies in Rapture.</p><p> - Arcadia grows mainly fruits, vegetables, nuts and lumber. Vast amounts of soybeans, wheat and corn are grown hydroponically in farms not open to the public. There are also multiple vineyards in operation. The cheaper ones grow their grapes hydroponically. The luxury ones have soil scooped from the ocean floor in order to give their wines that special “Rapture Terroir”.</p><p> - Tequila is the one liquor that absolutely cannot be produced efficiently in Rapture, due to the long maturation of the blue agave plant and its need for space. However, you can get tequila-flavored vodka…which is not at all recommended. Tequila is a very hot smuggling commodity. </p><p> - Dairy products are tricky business. There’s a wide variety of plant and nut milks available, which can be made into excellent cheeses, yogurts, ice creams and any other thing that requires it. They <i>almost</i> taste like the real thing. Icelandic dairy farmers make huge amounts of money selling their fine dairy products to smugglers. They absolutely know something’s up out there, but willingly turn a blind eye to it.</p><p> - Non-digestible fillers, outright dangerous food additives and copious use of chemical preservatives, flavorings and colorants are rampant in the unregulated world of commercial food. Will a farmer inject a carcinogenic red dye into a watermelon to make it look prettier? Heck yes, they will. Sawdust (or fish bonemeal) bread has never been so popular since the Victorian Era. </p><p> - Persephone serves the seafood that gets caught in the prison’s filters to the inmates in order to cut costs - and also to silently nudge them into participating in Fontaine Futuristic’s plasmid trials so they’ve got the money to buy off Sinclair’s Deluxe Menu instead. It contains mostly cheap diner food, but is a thousand times better than the usual Grey Fish Sludge. </p><p>Because of rampant vitamin D deficiency, fish oil is a hugely important part of everyone’s diet. Does this mean that manufacturers can get together, corner the market and fix the price as they please? You know it. Poor people sometimes end up choking down rancid fish oil to get by. Bad immune systems, fatigue, bone loss, depression, impaired wound healing and hair loss as a result of vitamin D deficiency are all too common in the tenements.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Big Daddy Headacanons</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>- Sinclair (usually) only sells the most disabled, spliced-up inmates to Fontaine Futuristics for the purpose of creating big daddies. His preferred business model is to extract as much profit and as many product tests out of them as possible, before passing them along.</p><p> - After control of Persephone was wrested from Sinclair and the supply of convicts severely reduced as a result, some unscrupulous security officers picked up a side hustle of selling the common criminals they picked up to the labs that needed them. This escalated very quickly into kidnappings on trumped up charges and finally, for no reason at all. Ryan Security officers were particularly enthusiastic about their side hustle, as they received an under the table bonus for bringing their employer more mindless soldiers. By the midpoint of the war, the few remaining ordinary people lived in terror of running into them on the street.</p><p> - When splicers figured out how to group up and take them down, the need for replacement big daddies grew even more dire. Anyone could become a target. Office politics in the labs were especially brutal. Have a coworker you don’t like? Slip some memory altering drugs into his coffee and then mess him up so badly that no one’ll recognize him. All it takes is a little paperwork to make it look like you bought another candidate off a friendly security officer and your boss is patting you on the back for making your quota today. Before possibly making you part of his quota tomorrow.</p><p> - Big daddies are overwhelmingly AMAB, due to their (statistically) larger stature. Abruptly putting on a literal half ton of weight is not easy on their internal organs. The bigger the individual, the easier the adjustment is and the longer they have before organ failure sets in. But if the security company just brought in a beefy lady and you’ve got a suit you need to fill, why not? Interestingly, AFAB big daddies tended to live a little bit longer after the collapse of society and the breakdown of the supply chains keeping them alive, due to their higher percentage of body fat.</p><p> - A responsibly produced big daddy takes about a month to create. This allows their bodies to adjust gradually to the change, greatly reducing losses to shock in the present and organ failure down the line. When they were still nailing down the process, it took even longer. But of course, the more dire things became, the more they had to speed it up. It is possible to transform a person into a big daddy in a matter of hours, but the result is a sick, unstable big daddy that in all likelihood won’t live through the year. Of course, by the end of the war, the health of the cannon fodder hardly mattered. </p><p> - Lamb knew this when she turned Sinclair into one. Out of the kindness of her heart, Mark Meltzer was given a longer treatment, so that he might spend as much time with Cindy as possible.</p><p> - In a functioning society, each big daddy had their own assigned area that they were meant to patrol with the little sister sent out to the zone that day. Other big daddies could sometimes get a little territorial about their stomping grounds, as the amount of ADAM corpses within it determined the amount of ADAM their little sisters would give them at the end of a shift. Violent clashes between big daddies over ADAM corpses in their territory were extremely rare and luckily, never resulted in more than superficial injuries. They were more common among the more free-willed Alpha Series, which was another reason why they were eventually taken out of commission.</p><p> - Originally, big daddies were sustained by a nutrient slurry formulated to their needs, via a feeding tube that ran from one of their tanks, into their helmets and down their noses, if they still had one. It included pain reduction medication, stimulants, as well as drugs meant to lower blood pressure and stave off organ failure. </p><p> - As society collapsed, a large amount of the resupplying stations on which they depended for food, medicine and repairs, were shut down, leaving them stranded in their assigned areas without access to those things. Depending on how many of their faculties had survived the process, they would scavenge for what they needed. Some were still able to remove their helmets and eat solid food. Others needed to mash it up, mix it with water and add it to their food tank. Many more just sat down, starved and waited for the organ failure to take them.</p><p> - The little sisters were absolutely crucial to the survival of stranded big daddies. They could reach valves and equipment that weren’t designed to be maintained by the big daddies themselves, as well as do things with their smaller hands that their guardians were unable to. The problem was finding one that was sane enough to figure out what needed doing. Oftentimes, they would be playing and singing songs, completely oblivious to the obvious distress of their dying big daddy who just needs them to unscrew this tank, for the love of god, please, it’ll take less than a minute of your time.</p><p> - Near the beginning of their transformation, all big daddies (except Sinclair) were given an ostomy surgery in order to deal more efficiently with waste. Once the transformation is complete, they regularly vent their waste into the ocean. Generally, if you happen to find yourself walking on the ocean floor for some reason, it’s a good idea not to follow a big daddy too close. </p><p> - The Rosies were designed specifically for the maintenance of the city, in order to cut costs and were oftentimes made out of the human maintenance workers whose jobs their kind were taking over. It was much easier to take someone who already knew how to weld, rather than have to completely program it in to someone who didn’t. Their slurries included a higher dosage of stimulants, so that they might continue working around the clock. The reason they tended to be smaller in stature was to prolong their working life. As a result, the Rosies are the longest lived big daddies in Rapture and have kept the city functioning for far longer than it would have lasted without them.</p><p> - Many more human memories remain in the memories of big daddies than it is possible to take out, but they’re disconnected and often make no sense to the big daddy in question. Sometimes a slightly more complete memory can be triggered by a familiar word, sight, sound or smell. Sometimes they remember only the feeling of a moment and nothing of its substance. </p><p> - In the beginning, before they’d perfected the memory-erasing formula, there were some problems with big daddies remembering bits and pieces of who they had been and using that information to try contacting friends and loved ones. It was an extremely rare and dangerous event that was dealt with swiftly, usually via lethal injection. </p><p> - Big daddies have favorite little sisters that they prefer to work with more than others and unlike the little sisters themselves, are able to tell them apart. Sometimes it’s because she’s more efficient at gathering, more inclined to realize when they need help, have a better self preservation instinct which results in less fights needed to protect her or...she simply reminds them of someone they loved before.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Characters: Gilbert and Sinclair</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Have a few (hopefully interesting) minor antagonist characterizations that I spent way too long coming up with based on tiny amounts of available canonical information on what they were like before Rapture fell.</p>
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    <p>Gilbert Alexander is organized, efficient, self-disciplined and passionate about his work. The money is nice, but it definitely isn’t his main reason for being. What he was really interested in when he came to Rapture was pushing the boundaries of his field, as well as those of his own talents. </p>
<p>To other people, he’s soft spoken, overly polite and a bit of a bore at parties. As his sense of his own social skill is somewhat inflated, this last bit frequently escapes him. He feels personally slighted when his overly eager to please tendencies fail to gain him friends and will ruminate on the smallest slights for much longer than they deserve. But ultimately, he’ll just keep stewing in his discontent and will likely never say anything to the colleagues who give him headaches. He does have an allergy to confrontation, after all. </p>
<p>You’d think one so sensitive to how other people think of him would be a bad fit for a job which involves a long line of test subjects who hate his guts and do not tire of saying so while they still have the faculties. But that’s where his self discipline comes in especially handy. Between him, his test subjects and the prison they come from, there is a meticulously crafted wall. On one side of it is him, his peers and his superiors. On the other side are those he simply doesn’t see as human at all. They’re just “animals” or “criminals” to him or in the case of the little sisters, production units. </p>
<p>It’s a bit embarrassing when an experiment goes awry and the boss has to wipe all the evidence lest Ryan find out that Rapture’s security has been compromised by a big daddy who’s gone too far out of city bounds to covertly get back. But he feels no true anger towards any of his test subjects when they “misbehave.” How can he, when they’re just animals doing what their nature demands they do? Thus, though his methods are by definition cruel, he does not indulge in cruelty for cruelty’s sake and leans toward seeing every failure as an opportunity for learning, rather than regret. </p>
<p>The only thing that was ever capable of knocking a hole through such a well built wall was a direct confrontation with an angry mother. When Lamb and the little sisters became human to him, his people-pleasing instincts went into full, self-destructive swing. </p>
<p>Sinclair’s problems are the inverse of Gil’s, which is why the two of them don’t like each other much. </p>
<p>Sinclair very much cares about the money. It’s a self defense mechanism. As long as he has enough of it, he can buy escape pods, bodyguards, all the luxuries that put a protective barrier between him and the outside world. But mainly, it’s so he can have all the security that his father never had. He’s told himself that this isn’t the case so many times that he almost believes it.</p>
<p>Like Gil, he too has a wall between whom he considers human and whom he does not, in order to do what he does in his line of work. But his is considerably more shoddy and easily knocked over. What works better for him is simply not looking too close at the consequences of his business plans. </p>
<p>In the book “Against Empathy”, there’s an anecdote about a woman in Nazi Germany who once lived within sight of a concentration camp and at a certain time every day, could see the people inside being tortured from her window. It bothered her immensely. So she rang the officers there and demanded that they torture their prisoners where she couldn’t see. The presence of empathy is not necessarily coupled with the drive to do right. </p>
<p>That’s where Sinclair is at, a decade before the start of the second game. He takes care not to spend a whole lot of time in his own slums and only visits Persephone in person several times a year. The vast majority of his time is spent in high class establishments and gilded boardrooms, a world away from the misery he’s built his fortune on. As long as it’s happening where he can’t see, he has no qualms about it at all. </p>
<p>What trips him up are the rare occasions in which he is forced to confront the consequences of his actions up close and personal. Even so, the remorse usually only lasts until he’s comfortably sheltered in his home or office or at a ritzy gentleman’s club filled with other people who don’t think his business tactics are a problem at all.</p>
<p>During the war, he sheltered in a luxury bunker filled with expensive liquor and top of the line prepackaged meals. For a while, he thought it would run its course and then the rebuilding would commence. He made a few bucks in the meantime and did a good job at keeping his head above water. </p>
<p>But when he emerged, his money was barely worth the paper it was printed on and of the empire he had worked so hard to build, nothing of worth remained. When his supplies ran out, he had to resort to scavenging like all the other common survivors. He frequently found himself working with people he had once considered beneath him and doing the dirty work he was in the habit of handing off to underlings. More than anything else, it was this experience that changed him. There was no longer anywhere he could run to escape his regrets. He couldn’t block out the reality that he now lived in the thick of.</p>
<p>Not that he didn’t try, though. In the beginning, Delta was merely a tool for securing his own exit out of the city. Or so he told himself. But as time went on and he got to know who he was working with, the pull of his newly installed moral compass grew stronger. Until finally, he found himself betraying the principles he’d swore he’d never give up.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. OC Antagonists</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>This is a commentary on characters who appear in <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25609369/chapters/62159557">Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range</a> and it makes a lot more sense if you read that first. If you haven't, please feel free to skip. Or not. Hey, I can't tell you what to do.</p>
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    <p>After being asked a related question, I started thinking about how Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range doesn't really have a major antagonist. You could kind of argue that it’s Sullivan, Ryan, Navarro, Gelber, Marston, Alves, Gilbert, Fontaine, Lamb, the prison staff <i>and</i> the Worst Nurse Ever, but…</p><p>They’re all just cogs in a machine of systems, ideologies, decisions and circumstances which have brought them to where they are and which eventually results in a situation in which every character is 100% in the right and yet, disaster happens anyway. My favorite kind of dilemma, TBH.</p><p>But, since I feel like talking about some minor (both probably and definitely dead) antagonists, here we go!</p><p>Alves is based off the looks of Jessica Alves, pre-transition. I actually started writing this story before she transitioned and only learned that she had once I was almost at the end of it. I feel kind of bad about giving her name to a villain, but after racking my brains and my internet browser for days, I just couldn’t find another name that would stick to him. </p><p>He was a performer who embezzled money from the wrong patron and so ended up in Persephone. What keeps him going is the (false) belief that he is not as powerless as the other people around him. Everything he does is in support of this fragile illusion. He cannot allow himself to be wrong, to be ridiculed or for anyone to be perceived as being marginally better than him. He is cool-headed (heh), calculating and good at what he does. The one thing he can’t handle is a person who isn’t like him.</p><p>Gelber is...an idiot. He’s terrible at his job. He frequently causes more trouble than he’s worth. He’s been on the verge of being fired for months and probably should have been, even before that. But the thing is, he’s just so dang <i>gregarious</i>. He has drinking buddies in every department. He knows the guys down at Persephone and has a personal relationship with a lot of employees working in Fort Frolic. He is forthright, open and honest with every person he considers to be his friend and expects them to behave in the same manner towards him. Trust and friendship are things he takes very seriously. </p><p>So, it stands to reason that if he feels that his trust has been betrayed...he doesn’t react well. </p><p>Marston, I think, is one of the most important characters in the story. He despises his partner with every fiber of his being. He’d be a much more competent officer if Gelber wasn’t constantly getting in the way or pushing him to the side. And yet, he’s still working with him. </p><p>Money is part of the reason, definitely, but the other part is how he <i>knows</i> Gelber will react were he to “betray” him. He stays with him out of sheer terror. He does his dirty work in order to avoid becoming a piece of work himself. </p><p>I went back and forth for literal months on whether to put the rape scene in or not. For a long time, I really didn’t want to and went on ahead without it until the final-final draft. But without it, there were beats of Devon and Delgado’s relationship that were missing. And Marston didn’t get to have his moment. </p><p>The reason Marston is so important is because he is against the injustice his partner is trying to commit, but because he is too afraid to meaningfully resist, he instead perpetuates it. He would not call himself a cruel or conniving person. He’s an ordinary guy - just one face among many like it, doing what he thinks he has to, to get by. And yet, his actions mark him as being just as bad as his partner. His relatability renders him the most chilling of the three. How many people are like him, out in the real world? How much injustice exists merely because the ones perpetuating it are too cowardly to put their money where their mouth is?</p><p>Anyway, I have a headcanon that Gelber dragged him out to Cohen’s Final Frolic for a good time and as a result, both of them ended up as beautiful pieces of art in the venues they once frequented.</p>
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